Gearfuse

I’m sort of worried that if I invest so much money in a Kindle, I’m going to have some serious tactile and olfactory withdrawal. And I don’t think I’m along. We need to feel the book in our hands and smell the scent that only a newly cracked-open book can emit.

“Smell of Books” aerosol spray allows you to simulate the scent of a real physical book, even if you’re reading an e-book. “Smell of Books” would be available in an assortment of scent variations, including Classic Musty Smell, Crunchy Bacon Scent, Eau You Have Cats, New Book Smell and Scent of Sensibility. Suggested retail price? Varies between $4.99 and $28.99 depending on the scent. (We’re almost positive this is a joke. But hell, people would buy it!)

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We haven’t been talking about the Amazon Kindle 2 a lot. Know why? Because everyone and their mother has been talking about it. Jeff Bezos was even on The Colbert Report shilling his new eBook reader. Interestingly, though, when the boys at iFixIt cracked open a brand new Kindle 2, they found a surprise waiting inside. See that circled area on the PCB? That’s a space for a SIM card. And something tells me, that with a soldering iron, a SIM card holder and some programming, you could turn the Kindle 2 into an entirely new device. Perhaps you could even speed up the downloads of eBooks and digital content.

Any ideas? What do you think that missing SIM slot is for?

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Do you read books? Excellent, but what about e-Books? They’re like books, except they are electronic. Don’t you understand the paradigm here? Get with the 21st century, McFly! Yesterday morning, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the Kindle 2. It’s better than the original Kindle and just as expensive, costing $359 which will ensure it doesn’t sell like hotcakes. Here’s the feature breakdown:

* Thinner: 0.36 inches thick, 25% thinner than an iPhone
* Quicker: Turns pages 20% faster
* Longer lasting: 25% increase in battery life
* Better display: 16 shades of gray (was 4)
* Bigger memory: Stores up to 1,500 books
* Bigger vocabulary: Built-in 250,000 dictionary
* Better navigation: With a 5-way joystick
* More vocal: Able to read text aloud in a semi-robotic voice
* Less accident prone: The page-turn buttons are smaller and harder to hit by mistake
* More wired: New Whispersync technology (more below)

Well, well Mr. Bezos. It seems you’ve foiled us again. Oh wait. How much is a book from the Amazon store? $9.99? No thanks.

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Useless features are what sell products, right? Probably not, but no one ever told the folks at MPNavi about that little fact. Their new Tomato U7 it quite small, and looks nothing like a tomato (thank god), but let’s have a rundown of features. It has a voice recorder, FM tuner, e-book reader, equalizer, photo album, games, and supports MP3, MP4, WAV, WMA, ASF, OGG, WMV, AMV, and JPEG. All of that fits inside of something that’s 38×64×14mm and weighs only 25 grams. Really, who is going to read books on a 1.6-inch CSTN screen? If you ever happen to catch anyone attempting to, please hit them upside the head and explain the wrongs of their ways. The Tomato U7 comes in 512MB/1GB/2GB sizes and is Korean, so you probably can’t buy it. –Nik Gomez

Meet The Diminutive Tomato U7, From MPNavi. Yeah, Tomato [via OhGizmo!]

Canon has released two new electronic dictionaries to ease your spelling problems. The Wordtank M300 and the Wordtank V300 also have the ability to playback your MP3s. So while an iPod or some other portable audio device probably does the job better, this can serve as a quick alternative. Seeing as these are first dictionaries and second audio players, the speakers are also assigned the duty of text-to-speech when you need to know how a certain word is pronounced. It’s too bad that we don’t see any ebook functionality here, that would make this an even more intriguing device now that ebook technology is getting reasonable enough for consumers to be truely interested. While these aren’t exaclty being marketed as pocket dictionaries, take a look, they are certainly smaller than that Websters you have laying around gathering dust.

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Looking forward to Valentine’s day, Sony has announced its limited edition Dooney & Bourke leather-bound PRS-500U2DB portable reader. This eBook has all of the same specs as the normal Sony Reader, except for its textured leather cover and exorbitant price.

The eBook will also be shipped in a special edition red box packaging, adding those little touches to make your loved ones bow down to you with thankfulness. There are thousands of books available to download through Sony, so no matter what reading level or genre fan your signifigant other has, they’ll be able to find material that interests them.

With its paper like display, you’ll find it pleasing to the eye and not overbearing or blurry like other eBooks on the market. And for a price of $500, you shouldn’t expect any less. Even more cool is that now you can read PDF and .doc files as well as uploaded blogs, view pictures, and listen to MP3s on your eBook for those long waits in line or at the airport. You can only buy them from Sony up until Febuary 9th, so get it early or you’ll be hunting eBay. — Andrew Dobrow

SonyStyle Dooney & Bourke Limited Edition Portable Reader PRS-500U2DB [via Reg Hardware]